Tucked away in the fairyland Duchy of Luxembourg and blessed, until recently, with benign neglect by the powers that be and the mass media, the Court of Justice of the European Communities has fashioned a constitutional framework for a federal-type structure in Europe. From its inception a mere quarter of a century ago, the Court has construed the European Community Treaties in a constitutional mode rather than employing the traditional international law methodology. Proceeding from its fragile jurisdictional base, the Court has arrogated to itself the ultimate authority to draw the line between Community law and national law. Moreover, it has established and obtained acceptance of the broad principle of direct integration of Community law into the national legal orders of the member states and of the supremacy of Community law within its limited but expanding area of competence over any conflicting national law.

In 1976 the United States Congress established the Coastal Energy Impact Program (CEIP) for the purpose of giving financial assistance to those coastal states of the United States off whose shores resource development was being conducted on the outer continental shelf. The program was designed to alleviate the burden that offshore development was said to have placed on those coastal states. The enacting legislation stipulated that the states must comply with certain requirements of the Act in exchange for the distribution of federal funds. Although these funds were to be provided partly in the form of grants distributed on the basis of various statutory formulas, the largest amount of the grants was to be divided on the basis of adjacency. Thus, a coastal state would receive additional funds if the activity on the outer continental shelf took place in the area determined to be “adjacent” to that state. As a result, the geographical description of the areas “adjacent” to each coastal state had a direct impact on the amount of funds each state would realize from the program. Statutory provisions and the regulations required that adjacency be determined on the basis of lateral boundaries drawn in the ocean seaward from the coastal state. Those boundaries might already have been established on the basis of interstate agreements or court decisions. In the absence of such delimitations, the Assistant Administrator for Coastal Zone Management of the Department of Commerce National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was called upon to establish the “lateral seaward boundaries” on the basis of the international law applicable to lateral boundary delimitations. The “lateral seaward boundaries” so established by the Assistant Administrator would have no legal significance other than for CEIP purposes.

On December 11, 1979, Anthony C. E. Quainton, Director of the U.S. State Department’s Office for Combatting Terrorism, responded to an inquiry about the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages, in particular its Article 12, by stating that the Convention “does not provide a loophole for members of national liberation movements or anyone else and does not supply a means by which any State Party to the Hostages Convention can escape the prosecute or extradite requirement.”

The largest industry in the United States, India, Austria, Pakistan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Portugal, among others, is the textile and clothing industry. And perhaps in no other sector of postwar trade, save agriculture, have such persistent cries for protection been raised. Trade in textiles has demanded and received special treatment from national and international authorities since the late 1950’s. It is against this backdrop that some of the more important developments in the international regulation of commercial activities have occurred.

At a hearing on the Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (the Moon Treaty), adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 5, 1979, which the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held on July 29, 1980, S. Neil Hosenball, General Counsel of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and U.S. representative on the UN Outer Space Legal Subcommittee, stated that interpretation of the Agreement depended upon its negotiating history as required by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) and by customary international law.